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[Alexandr Korol]

and you might get distracted by passing people, cars, external noise. But then, at some point, you start repeating the numbers, close your eyes, and it’s like you disconnect from everything. You completely disconnect from the world — you fall into something. And in that moment, when you’re on the verge of losing control over your body, that’s when you suddenly come back. And that’s it. And the longer you were in that state, the better. After that, you feel completely different — like someone else, a stranger. But I noticed that after going through each of those places of power, different things would happen. We’d see how certain films would get highlighted for us, or music, or unusual streets. We even noticed one strange thing: let’s say we found three places of power on a map — until we went through all three, we wouldn’t discover the fourth or fifth. Only after we completed the first, second, and third did the next one open up to us. Once we passed that one, the next would be revealed. We were never given all the places at once — it was step by step. You had to go through three and be “irradiated” by them before the fourth, fifth, and sixth would be revealed. That was an unusual and fascinating observation.

And it felt like what was pouring into me each time was so different — it’s impossible to describe — but something was definitely happening that made you feel fearless. You felt an insane level of confidence, as if you were starting to see things you couldn’t see before, like your entire angle of perception on the world had shifted. You’d come home to your apartment and not recognize it. You’d look in the mirror and not recognize yourself or understand what was happening to you. It was like a flash, a stream. It wasn’t like we sat around for three days bored and then decided to go back to it. No, once it started, it went on nonstop until New Year’s — like a series, like a film. We were constantly deciphering, decoding, digging into it again and again and again. And at the same time, we were watching movies like “The Da Vinci Code,” listening to music that matched the vibe. It was something unbelievable. It felt like something was about to happen at any second — as if I was just about to uncover something huge, or lift off, or a UFO was about to fly over. It all felt like it was peaking in 2010. And then suddenly, it all stopped, and regular human life began — routine, the everyday. That first year afterward was really hard for me. I used to explain it to my friends like this: “Imagine I was taken aboard a flying saucer.